When the time comes to capture data from a microcontroller-based project, or control an embedded project via a PC – the thought of writing the appropriate PC software can give some people a headache. Or if you’re an Arduino or other development board user and are frustrated with the Serial Monitor box – where do you go? These problems and many more can be solved by using the Megunolink Pro software that’s the subject of this review.

From the Megunolink website,

MegunoLink Pro is a tool designed to aid embedded electronics designers. MegunoLink provides a set of tools to help visualize serial data, it is made up of a set of visualizers that each have a unique function and any number of them can be utilized at once. With these visualizers and our functional tabbed and docked interface you can create a full control center for your embedded project. Plot, log and monitor serial streams from both hardwired, bluetooth, and network based (UDP) devices.

The user interface allows for a completely customized layout with many different visualisers displaying information at once. Perfect for developing exciting new microcontroller based designs. Data streams go from hard to follow serial messages to easy to interpret tables and interactive plots. The interface panel allows you to set up custom GUI elements that let you take control of your device from the comfort of your PC screen.

Phil from Megunolink gives us a quick demonstration in the following video:

Installation

Getting Megunolink running takes around ten minutes. You’ll need a recent PC running Windows of some variety (XP/ 2003/Vista/Win7/8) and also .NET Framework v4.0. You can download a trial Pro version which operates for seven days – at which point you can use the “lite” version or purchase a Pro license. The Megunolink team have given our readers a discount on the personal version, use the coupon code “TROMLP” for 30% off.

Operation

Using Megunolink is quite simple, even though there’s a whole pile of functions. From the home page there’s a variety of documentation for all of the software features, so you can get started very quickly. You can simply capture all output from the serial line and have it saved to a text file (and with a time/date stamp, which removes the need for a RTC in the hardware) – something which seems quite simple but not done with the Arduino IDE:

Furthermore there is an “upload monitor” in Megunolink – which can automatically disconnect from the COM: port used by an Arduino when you need to upload a new sketch, then reconnect afterward. This saves a lot of to-and-fro between the two programs when adjusting code.

The key to analysing data from the microcontroller is to insert text notes in the serial output, which are then interpreted by Megunolink for display purposes. For example, if you have your MCU code send labels with the data, Megunolink can then sort these out into channels and graph the data, for example:

An example Arduino sketch is provided to demonstrate this, and it translates to other development platforms. Another great feature is the ability to create a graphical user interface for projects connected to the PCB. You design the GUI which can include buttons, sliders and numeric fields, for example:

… and each of which send values of your choice to the device via USB. Then it’s a simple matter of coding your device to respond to the serial commands.

Real-time mapping

As mentioned in the video above, there’s also mapping support – your hardware sends GPS coordinates and they’re displayed in a real-time window:

Arduino programming

There’s also an interface to allow programming of an Arduino with .hex files via Megunolink. Currently it can work with the ATmega328, -2560, and with an external programmer -328P and -644 microcontrollers.

Conclusion

Once again Megunolink has proven to be a useful piece of software. It gives you a friendly and powerful connection to all the data from your microcontroller, and also a simple GUI for control via serial. So test it for yourself, it won’t cost you anything for the trial version. And if you like it – don’t forget about the tronixstuff.com discount on the personal version – use the coupon code “TROMLP” for 30% off. Finally, if you have any questions please contact Megunolink. And if you made it this far – check out my new book “Arduino Workshop” from No Starch Press.

In the meanwhile have fun and keep checking into tronixstuff.com. Why not follow things on twitter, Google+, subscribe for email updates or RSS using the links on the right-hand column? And join our friendly Google Group – dedicated to the projects and related items on this website. Sign up – it’s free, helpful to each other – and we can all learn something.